A Reporter's Reporter - People - Obituary

JOURNALISTS, AND ESPECIALLY NEWS REPORTERS, DO not rank high in public opinion when it comes to their human qualities. But anyone who might have thought that being a tenacious, committed and highly successful newspaper reporter was incompatible with being a kind, fun-loving, generous and extraordinarily honorable individual certainly never met Jeff Cole.

Cole, who was killed in a plane crash last week, was a reporter's reporter: unrelenting in his pursuit of the news, determined never to get beat on a story and ready to work 24/7 to stay ahead. As aerospace editor of the Wall Street Journal he owned his beat, leading the way on most of the big stories in his industry for the better part of the last decade. And he accomplished that entirely through tireless attention to the basics of the craft: long-term development of sources; constant self-education on the ins and outs of the subject; scrupulous fairness, hard work and terrific instincts for where news was likely to happen.

Jeff was naturally gregarious, curious and charming, and that certainly helped him work his beat. He was always chatting up somebody about something, to the point where his friends teased him about whether he was, perhaps, running for mayor. Yet this never translated into disingenuous schmoozing. Janet Malcolm once famously declared that a good journalist was by nature a con artist, drawing people in and gaining their trust only to betray them for the sake of the story. I'm sure there are many people who were upset for one reason or another over things that Jeff wrote, and he was never shy about defending his turf. But he was genetically incapable of being a con.

He was a role model for another reason, too: In an age when journalism has become an occupation of the upper-middle-class elite, Jeff was more of a blue-collar guy. He worked his way through college slinging packages for UPS, even as he supported his young family. He climbed the journalism ladder the old-fashioned way, starting at a small-town newspaper and jumping to progressively larger dailies until he finally made it to the Journal.

Jeff died in the line of duty. He was doing a story about Michael Chowdry, chairman of the upstart freight carrier Atlas Air and an experienced pilot and airplane collector, and he agreed to accompany Chowdry in a Czech-made military trainer. With the encyclopedic knowledge of airplanes he gained through his years on the beat, Jeff was generally very careful about what he flew in, but in this case he decided to go anyway.

So why is this eulogy in this space, beyond the fact that Jeff was, as you've surely guessed by now, a close friend? Because he represented an approach to journalism that's too often lost in this age of technology and new business models and endless talk about "content."

Very few new media companies are investing substantial resources in good, old-fashioned reporting, and too few up-and-coming journalists honor the fundamentals of the craft. Readers, jaded by the ethics-free shenanigans of the tabloids and the shallow sensationalism of so much TV, lose sight of the fact that there are, still, Jeff Coles among us. He was passionately devoted to the story and, if possible, even more devoted to family, friends and integrity. It's a loss for us all.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Standard Media International
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group